November 30, 2015

Art Month Sydney returns in 2016, from 1 March – 20 March,
with new Creative Director, Barry Keldoulis at the helm.
This follows Barry’s recent success as Director of Sydney Contemporary
art fair in 2013 and 2015 and the Melbourne Art Fair in 2014. The
dynamic program, inspired by the creative producers of Sydney, will
expand across the city and inhabit new spaces and unexpected
locations. Comprised of Exhibitions, Talks, Tours, Experiences and the
much-loved Precinct Nights, Art Month Sydney will highlight the
galleries, institutions, ARIs, art schools, artists and curators that
generate Sydney’s marketplace of ideas.

The Collectors’ Space, an annual exhibition that celebrates private art collections, partners
with
long term sponsors, AON, and, for the first time in 2016,
BresicWhitney, to present an exhibition at an unoccupied inner city
house. The space, announced only weeks before the exhibition opens, will
exhibit works from the collections of Sally Dan- Cuthbert,
Courtney Gibson, Danny Goldberg, and Jasper Knight. The domestic setting
of the Collectors’ Space will provide a domestic context not normally
associated with a public exhibition of contemporary art.

Precinct
Nights return in 2016, beginning with a Mardi Gras-inspired queer night
in East Sydney on Thursday, 3 March. Queer performers
will activate restaurants, bars and retail stores during the night,
while Alaska Studios hosts a queer cabaret in their untouched basement
space. In addition, a pop up bar will be held in Crown Lane at Creative
Space 99.

This
year, Art Month will be working in partnership with Parramatta’s
Information Cultural Exchange on the new project titled 'Mother’s
Spice', it is a multimedia performance presented by a cast of newly
arrived migrant, asylum seeker and refugee mothers living in Western
Sydney. They will use spice as a performance element and a trigger to
perform their own stories as inspired by their personal
memories, journeys, experiences of motherhood and life in Australia.

A
number of Sydney galleries have also been confirmed to take part in the
2016 program, including Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery who will be doing
a book launch and talk with Daniel Boyd. In addition, Brenda May
Gallery and artist Todd Fuller invite the public to contribute to his
participatory animation 'The Unite Project,’ responding to the work
through drawing, colouring, writing or collage. 107
Projects will present Audiocraft is a day for radio producers,
podcasters and documentary storytellers to come together and talk,
listen and learn about making great stories with sound.

The Sydney Morning HeraldSpectrum
Now Festival presented by ANZ from 1 until 16March 2016, today announced ARIA award-winning musician
and songwriter Megan Washington, renowned Australian artist and dual-Archibald Prize winner Del
Kathryn Barton, one of Australia’s most popular and versatile entertainers David Campbell and television
presenter and comedian Charlie Pickeringas
the four Creative Ambassadors for the 2016 Festival.Spectrum Now’s Creative Ambassadors for 2016, will assist to develop the 2016 program,
overseeing the music, art, stage and talks content respectively.

As the public faces of the
festival, the Creative Ambassadors will draw on their considerable
expertise in their fields to provide creative direction and garner
participation and support from
local and international arts communities and key opinion leaders.

In
2015, the Spectrum Now Festival attracted 100,000 people across over 200
exhibitions, gigs and events, under the direction of actor Richard
Roxburgh. The 2016 festival will celebrate Sydney’s vibrant culture and inspiring creative locals, with
a dynamic program of unique and unexpected collaborations across art, music, stage and talks.

Returning
in 2016, signature event, Spectrum Now @ The Domain an 11 day outdoor
event located at the Domain, will be on from 3 – 13 March 2016. With
ticketed music concerts curated by the Secret
Sounds Group and a free outdoor art festival, The Domain will be brought
to life with music, art, performance, dining and drinking. Across the
road at the Art Gallery of NSW, the sell out conversation events at the
inaugural Festival will also make a return,
curated with input from Fairfax’s top journalists, editors and writers
from entertainment. The first release line-up of events for Spectrum Now
Festival 2016 will be announced at the end of November.

Alesandro
Ljubicic, known for his luxuriant use of oil paint and bold hues, will unveil a new body of paintings for a solo exhibition titled The
Scent of Painting, to be presented at Michael Reid Sydney from 3 until 27 February 2016.

A colour-intensive, physically immersive response to the beauty of nature, The Scent of
Painting will
envelop the viewer in a creative collaboration that brings together the
artist; the Sydney-based florist, Mr. Cook; the Brisbane-based
perfumer, Damask Perfumery; and
the bespoke scarf manufacturer Kmossed, from Edinburgh, Scotland.

Examining the intense beauty of nature, Ljubicic invites the audience
on a multi-layered and vivid experience through this constructed ecosystem; each sense engaged by a heady mix ofcolour,
texture and aroma.

The Scent of Painting reveals
both of Ljubicic's best known art forms: his large and small scale Still Life floral paintings
on stretched linen and his gestural colour studies on birch boards. Both instantly recognisable by the drag and scoop of vibrant slabs of pure oil paint; the resulting surfaces taking on a distinctly
sculptural quality. The exhibition will show some 25 works on linen and 30 colour studies.

Ljubicic draws inspiration from a diverse selection of florists both nationally and internationally. For The
Scent of Painting,
he has collaborated closely with floral designer Sean Cook. To
compliment the new body of work, Ljubicic, for the first time, has also
created a unique magnolia infused
scent and limited edition, hand-made scarves printed with his artwork,
both available within the exhibition.

Casula Powerhouse Art Centre (CPAC) and the Blake Society announced finalists
for the 2016 Blake Prize, Australia’s longest standingand
most prestigious art prize which encourages conversation about
spirituality
and religion through art. The Blake Prize exhibition will be presented
for the first time at CPAC, from 13 February until 24 April 2016,
featuring the work of 8o finalists from across Australia, Ireland, the
USA, Switzerland, France, Germany and New Zealand.

The winner of the 64thBlake
Prize – presented biennially – receives $35,000 and the Emerging Artist Award, an acquisitive prize, is awarded $6,000. In addition, CPAC will also offer the inaugural Blake Residency programa
one-month residency at CPAC and a solo exhibition which will be unveiled at the 2018 Blake exhibition program. This year there were 594 entries for the Prize with the 80 finalists selected by the curatorial
team at CPAC.

October 20, 2015

The National Art School Postgraduate Exhibition 2015 celebrates and showcases the achievements of more than fifty graduating students from the Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) and Master of Fine Art. The exhibition will be on show from 30 October until 7 November at the NAS Gallery in Sydney’s Darlinghurst.

The 2015 postgraduate cohort have reaped the benefits of the recent $8.7 million redevelopment of the National Art School’s state-of-the-art Postgraduate Centre. Now it’s time to enjoy one of the most anticipated events in the visual arts calendar, the National Art School Postgraduate Exhibition, offering the opportunity to see what our leading fine art students are creating and the chance to acquire these works directly from the studio.

Michael Snelling, National Art School Director, said, “The Exhibition is a platform for emerging artists to showcase their work to thousands of visitors including curators, collectors and gallerists.”

The Exhibition will feature a diverse and stimulating collection of artwork produced by graduates of the rigorous Master of Fine Art and Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) degree programs. Students can major in ceramics, drawing, painting, printmaking, photography or sculpture.

The Inspector of Tides’ is appropriated from the second volume of work by the late Australian poet Michael Dransfield and provides the spiritual and conceptual framework for Shaun Gladwell’s exhibition. Rodney Hall has described Dransfield as an eclectic poet who was never interested in orthodox categories or even the larger interconnections within art and society. Instead, Dransfield was trying to open himself to ‘surprises’ through a wild and discursive range of interests and stylistic approaches. Gladwell finds an affinity with this rejection of a specific and singular signature, both in terms of medium and subject matter. If any methodology is employed in Gladwell’s recent works then it is an itinerant multi-media trans-national and trans-historical wandering: the present show was produced in London, Paris, Antwerp, Sydney and Perth.

The work engages with material from the early 20th century with Hans Heysen, the 1930’s with the films of Cinesound and photographs of George Caddy, the 1970’s with Dransfield himself. The exhibition also features performances held within the last year by Gladwell and his collaborators. The work even makes projections into a distant future with the painting of a science fiction drone. The tide of the exhibition is historically and geographically expansive.

‘The Inspector of Tides’ is perhaps most literally depicted by Gladwell in a series of large scale photographs taken at Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach. Since his childhood, Gladwell has returned to Bondi to receive inspiration. ‘Severed Heads‘ depicts a hand reaching out from the churning whitewash of a broken wave. The title describes both the mechanics of freshly cut flowers as ‘severed heads’ but also refers to the 1980’s Australian experimental band by the same name.

This exhibition is comprised of photographs, paintings, installation and video.

Christian Thompson, one
of Australia's most significant indigenous artists, will be the focus of a new
exhibition presented Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) exploring the
intersection of art and fashion through his cross-disciplinary work. Presented from
October 23 until 12 December 2015, Collection+:
Christian Thompsonincludes photography; sculpture, performance, film
and video works that appropriate traditional Aboriginal iconography, often creating
fashion-related imagery with original and compelling contemporary art results.

Collection+: Christian
Thompsonis the fifth exhibition in the SCAF
Collection+ series that incorporates key
works from the Gene & Brian Sherman Collection alongside works loaned from major
public and private collections worldwide. For this exhibition, works by
Christian Thompson have also been borrowed from the National Gallery of
Victoria (NGV), the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), and the Museum of
Contemporary Art (MCA). A new sculptural
work, All Revolutions are Led by the
Young, 2013 will also be premiered as part of the exhibition.

The exhibition is
curated by emerging Melbourne-based
curator and lawyer Alana Kushnir, who has explored concepts of collection
and ownership, questioning what it means to truly own or possess something. Kushnir
has looked into concepts such as the extinction and rediscovery of indigenous
languages and the appropriation of indigenous Australian material culture.
Kushnir draws a connection between these questions and Thompson’s photographic
series, We Bury Our Own, which has
been selected from the 900 piece Gene & Brian Sherman Collection.